AWESOME: Mark Steyn puts ‘taxing the rich’ in absolute perspective

Mark Steyn gave a fantastic monologue subbing in for Rush today, explaining the idiocy of the Buffett rule (aka taxing the rich) and how it would take 514 YEARS for the Buffett rule to pay off Obama’s 2011 deficit.

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It’s such an easy thing to point out. I get so frustrated that Republicans either cannot or will not ever make these points in public. Democrats have talking points that they repeat over and over, “taxing the rich raises 800 billion dollars” is now common knowledge.

Why isn’t it common knowledge that the 800 billion figure is over a full ten years and the federal government spent 1,300 billion more than it took in this year alone?

kong1967

..and look how Republicans are caving to more taxes. Some are saying they will agree to tax hikes in exchange for cuts in the budget.

If history has shown us anything, it’s that Dems get the tax hikes or borrowing increases and all we ever get are promises to cut the budget “x” amount of dollars over a decade (for example). Do the cuts ever happen? No. Another example is Obama cutting Medicare by $700 billion and saying he will cut that much waste….but the waste is not pointed out and is not immediately tackled. Does anyone believe there will be any attempt to cut out waste? Nope.

Repuplicans know this is a losing game. Personally, I think they agree to the Democrat demands knowing damn good and well that we will not see any of the return promises. Yet, they do it anyway and preach to us that the cuts are coming. Bullcrap, and they know it. They are just excusing themselves for caving and trying to passify us.

I’m done with the Republican party unless they show me a fight in Obama’s second term. They are off to a terrible start.

Sober_Thinking

Spot on…

Idahoser

what happens to the country and it’s people is of no importance to politicians of any stripe. They just want the sound bite for their next election they can say “he ended the recession” or “she cut the budget” or whatever.
They do not represent their constituents, they represent their reelection campaigns. Period.

Betsey_Ross

I’ve spent the holiday weekend wondering what in the world has happened to my country. The political class has not served this country for ages. They promise the world and free stuff and we still have the same problems. The truth is they do not want to solve any problems. We need real leaders, but we don’t have any.

John3_3

What has happened to our country? Answer: SIN. (Abortion, Homosexuality, adultery, covetousness) to name a few.

Jg 2:13 And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.

Pr 14:34 ¶ Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

kong1967

I think there are some that are good, but very few. I’ve known a couple that quit and said you can’t beat the corruption.

4CalKnoess

You’re right on point………let me add that the 2012 election constituted 2 losses; one when O’bama won and the second when the elected Republicans started their same old loser routine, giving way to the Dem’s demands and asking us to go along. Losing is made worse when the coaches tell you lost, and there’s no need to play anymore.

No, there were actually 3 losses…….I knew the Republicans would act this way: I’ve lost my hope.

XXIIFan

The truth of how fast so much money is being spent is so absurd that the average person simply can’t comprehend it, and the run of the mill liberal absolutely refuses to believe it, or even listen to it. They simply stick their fingers in their ears and say lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalallalalalalal until the truth bearer shuts the f#@% up.

401_Unauthorised

Are you my doppelganger?

Betsey_Ross

The Republicans have a lot of ‘splaining to do. They never do it. They assume that everyone understands what their thinking process is. Now they are trying to be dem-lite. That never works. I’d just as soon they merge with the Democraps and leave us free to start another party.

Rshill7

Isn’t “taxing the rich’ really a regressive stealth tax on the poor? Isn’t it like what unions do when they strike and the company being struck goes out of business? Rather than increasing their pay they lose all of their pay. Who does that help? The Socialists.

When the Federal Government taxes the rich, that includes the ‘idle rich’ as well as the ‘working their bloomin’ asses off rich’. Those that provide jobs. Honest work for honest pay. The poor are laid off, they pay higher food prices, higher gas prices, and their prospects grow more and more bleak.

The middle class loses the ability to become upwardly mobile, start their own businesses, or maintain that business they once had.

The working poor then, are moved onto permanent welfare rolls, the middle-class become the working poor with welfare just over the next horizon. The freebie voter rolls grow exponentially, the previously “rich” become the middle class, who are now the previously “rich” but newly poor.

The former US becomes the former USSR and the rest of world goes to hand in a hellbasket.

kong1967

Exactly, but that’s too much for a Democrat voter who believes in socialism to understand. They think the money comes out of Obama’s butt or something (Obama’s stash as one woman said).

The more the rich man succeeds, he spreads his own wealth while making more wealth in the process. Take that away and the poor will realize that Obama doesn’t have a stash up his rear. The poor will lose everything.

By the way, we both know that the whole intent is to create more people dependent on government. Without that the Democrat party collapses.

Mark also talks about prezzy having an employed full time “projectionist” – a dude, who puts a movie for the Great one, if the Great one wishes to see any…
His wife and 2 daughters –
————- spent 1.6 BILLION dollars on travels last year….more than any king/queen.
We have to cut our budgets, not he…

Rshill7

The Republicans should take the Buffet Rule and rename it the Stuffit Rule and shove it in the Democrat’s…outbox, which B. Fwank refers to as his inbox.

Ok, I need probably need to take a break now.

sjmom

Yours is a much better title. 🙂

kong1967

Oh, but Obama says it’s all about fairness. Those poor welfare Democrats are just paying too large of a share of our tax burden while the rich don’t pay anything. That just isn’t fair.

For one, when did it become fair for someone who pays ZERO federal income tax to weigh in on what amount someone else should pay? Additionally, since when did it become unfair to the 0% tax payers for the rich to only pay 90% of the taxes? (number is just a guesstimate)

Marky_D

We have he same nonsense in the UK – the weird left always talks about the rich not paying their fair share. They normally follow this up with “they don’t care if our schools or our beloved NHS (lol) go broke as they send their kids to private schools and have private healthcare!”

Well hold up – by what wacky definition of ‘fair’ should those who don’t use public services pay the most for their upkeep?

It’s pure politics of envy and has nothing to do with balancing budgets.

kong1967

Exactly.

deeme

I’m starting to think that there are no Republicans or Conservatives left…It’s far left liberals and the so called Republicans are the old Democrat party..there are no people who can stand up and point out the facts that Mark is pointing out.maybe a few but they are outnumbered…They can tax everyone 100 percent and it wouldn’t save them..why would they choose killing the job creators, over paying for one year of Obama in the year 2525 never mind what he will do in the next four years…to erase all that…We can only be saved by a total gutting of the bloated monster that votes for more taxpayer money to feed it..but it’s unsustainable and we have a whole bunch of crybaby, I want itnows running things that live only for the here and now and could care less about future generations. The men who should be President that often are showcased here, want nothing to do with it..

kong1967

Woops…something went wrong.

kong1967

Dang it….sorry. For some reason it’s not posting my replies as replies. They’re posting as original statements.

Marky_D

Love Steyn – no one does total civilisational collapse with such sharp wit!

Technically it’s a Canadian accent, since that’s his country of origin. But he lived in Britain and Australia for a while, so he’s got his own version of Commonwealth-speak. That’s not uhh, uncommon.

I like listening to folks from the Commonwealth countries: The Brits have regional dialects just like we do (for example, comparing Texan-speak with Boston-speak can be amusing). And just like here, over in Britain, folks can tell if you’re from Cornwall or Cardiff by your accent.

Of course, citizens of the Commonwealth travel and relocate for work purposes among the various countries (UK, AUS, & CA being the largest). Several execs of British companies travel and live abroad for years before going home to retire in the UK. Despite this, the “locals” always come up with their own way to “pernounce” stuff, and it sticks. So if a Scot, an Aussie, and some Hoser from Thunder Bay, Ontario got together in a room, they would barely understand each other. Throw in a Texan and a die-hard NASCAR fan from Alabama, and you’d really have some fun.

But the Brits added one more twist by also dividing pronunciation along class lines. The Royals have an accent that almost no one else uses, and the next level of the peerage has their own way of speaking. It’s from those folks that a type of pronunciation called Received English (or the received pronunciation was derived. This is a form of pronunciation that is the equivalent in bland, “un-accentedness” among Brits, as “midwestern American” is over here.

So your BBC news readers tend to sound like the ones who use received pronunciation in Britain, just as American broadcasters tend to recruit folks from the Midwest to do newscasts here.

There’s three minutes of your life wasted! Sorry.

anneinarkansas

No apolgy needed. I really enjoyed your reponse. I too am interested in dialects all over and can distinguish many of the British classes..certainly not as well as you. I recognize Aussie and New Zealand too.
I am a “Southern Arkansan originally” which is different from where I live now in North Arkansas. I know the Texas accents and the difference in Mississippi, Alabama and different parts of Georgia and South Carolina, all different.
I also lived twelve years in New England and know the difference in Boston, Maine, Vermont, etc.
I lived nine years in Chicago which is the most unpleasant accent going. I get such a kick out of that peculiar Shep Smith (a Mississippi native) who adopts the Chicago way, as Rahm puts it.
My other husband and the father of my children is from Kansas City and has a Walter Chronkite speech pattern which my children seem to have adopted in spite of growing up in New England, living with a Southern mother and grandmother and living now in NYC and Seattle. (Yes, sorry to admit that they are liberal..advanced degrees from Yale and Boston College….love them anyway).
My husband of 17 years now and I grew up together and went back to our hometown in Southern Arkansas the same year when we went through divorces….lived on the same street, attended the same church and have similar family backgrounds. He is a great mimic and is so funny when we visit New England, picking up and reponding in their accent. We lived on the same street as kids is what I meant to say and attended the same church and high school.
When I first moved to New England from Chicago in 1979, people would say to me after hearing me speak “Where Y’all from?”…nasty I thought…I would respond “ChiCAgo” and then came the funny look, to which I replied “South Side.”
Now you are bored….sorry!

No, I am not. My other husband had a job offer near Pittsburgh (Upper St. Clair) the same year that we moved to New England, which he did not accept. It was a beautiful area.
My only other experience in PA has been in and out of the Philly airport.

They’re an example of a fairly small, regionally-speaking, but identifiable accent of English that you don’t hear anywhere else. Of course, the way people use the term is to refer to the yokel/redneck variety.

Ah, well. I’m a redneck, so I can laugh!

anneinarkansas

I like you!
While not a redneck (town girl growning up and retired teacher), many of my favorite people in life have been rednecks. I detest snobs, intellectual and social.
My husband is Fire Chief (at 74 years ofage) of our volunteer fire department…our best and most loyal people are the rednecks. We are in the country in a retirement area. Some of the “imports”are the nasties….not all of course, many great people here from all over the country.

Larry is one of my favorites….along with Tim Allen.
My dad was an engineer. His favorite person, besides my mother and me, was his brother who was a redneck and proud of it…Daddy idolized him.
Daddy could change his speech patterns when he so chose. With educated people he spoke their language. With his brother and his many friends he used theirs…I have heard that JFK could do that too.
My daddy was a great man…as is my husband…he has the same gift…educated and communicates with all.
I was not so blessed. People tell me that I have an “aristocratic” look. I am not like that at all. I am shy and have a difficult time in mixing with people.
I was most comfortable in front of a classroom where I could be anyone I wanted to be.
One thing I am not is a snob.

I tend to blend in, too. But I drag in a few redneck-isms to keep people on their toes! (I’ve even converted my wife into the sekrit sussi-o-tee of rednecks.)

You couldn’t be a snob, being married to one of the most community-oriented guys in your town. Fire chiefs, water system supervisors, and the road commissioners are like the town handymen. Pretty much the Git R Done boys.

Dana ZZ Garcia

Great show. I particularly agree with his point about schools being indoctrination factories from the earliest grades.

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” – Vladimir Lenin

JeffWRidge

No matter how many times you point this out to the lefties, they never relent. That’s because it’s not about balancing the budget, or lowering the debt, or even helping the poor. It’s all about redistributing wealth and punishing the rich. Lefties want to take away people’s wealth to punish them. They’re fanatics about it.

conservativemama

It’s that but it’s also about power. The Left will punish the wealthy and then confiscate what they cannot earn. They will have power and rule over us. It doesn’t matter if the economy tanks because even in North Korea, the leaders still live well, eat well, dress well.

Envy, hate, avarice……………..the attributes that drive the left.

JeffWRidge

You’re right about that. Everything the left does is geared towards gaining them more power.

freenca

Brilliant! Making the average person understand the numbers is nigh on to impossible though as financial literacy is a non-op registered vehicle in this society! Having created a money pit of broken institutions and corrupt bureaocracies, the ruling class thinks they can perpetuate their own power. The bureaucrats may only succeed in blowing bubbles at the populace with no clue how to make the soap from which all the bubbles are made.

sjmom

Unfortunately, for Mark and for us, it takes common sense to understand what he just said and there seems to be little of it in today’s world.

Sober_Thinking

Punishing, I mean “taxing” the rich is such donkey-squeeze… it does nothing but perpetuate the war on success. Obama is a crook and he’s turning weak-minded Americans all gangta too. Absolute insanity.

401_Unauthorised

Everytime Obama and his disgusting train of twits wax lyrical about taxing the rich, I scream what Mr Steyn says in the above clip at my television!

Sad thing though is that not once did I hear Mittens use this argument during the campaign, an argument that would have absolutely demolished Barack H Obama. And now, even after the election, instead of making this argument and showing up the Democrats for the Stalinists they are, Repoobicans are caving! I tell you folks, the GOP is a patsy party.

I mean even if all of us were to begin working for the government, there’s no way we’d be able to pay off this debt in the next four years or close! Yet nobody in the Republican party can articulate this simple fact. We need a Brit-born Canadian to do it for us?

Taking back the narrative is not even hard yet they’re not even trying?!

And when we finally do run out of money and end up like Greece, what do we do? We are going to be facing social unrest on a scale that we’ve never seen before, worse than in 1968 or the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. If I were you, I’d get ready. At this rate, it will be here by 2016.

MicahStone

Actually, steyn MISSED the point ENTIRELY. Like all totalitarian-oriented leftist extremist regimes, the OBOZO crowd NEEDS a DEMON to keep the ignorant masses supporting them. The “rich” have often been used by such manipulative people to stir up emotions in the masses and have them misguidedly adhere to those that claim to be helping them by destroying the DEMONS (when, as always, it’s just the opposite). So remember, it’s NOT about taxing the rich – it’s really about creating and perpetuating a DEMON that can be exploited for political gain.

That proves that, “Government is way bigger than the capacity of the rich to sustain it.”

He totally nailed it.

Giovanna Visconti

Steyn HAS discussed this.

P.S.: He NEVER misses the point.

sybilll

We are really in a no-win situation here. Our American Idol society simply doesn’t grasp (nor care?) about the enormity of the fiscal crisis. And trying to explain the Laffer curve to any liberal is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.

Constance

I have been madly infatuated with Mark Steyn for many years now. Intelligent, witty, brash, conservative to his core, and adorable. (big sigh)

Anyhow, I digress. 🙂

Giovanna Visconti

Constance, Talk about mad infatuation! I agree totally (even if I am just old enough–just!–to be his mother!). After all, the mind IS the sexiest organ, and coupled with brilliant wit and humor what’s not to sigh for? And anyway, he’s a redhead. That seals it for me! 🙂

WordsFailMe

We need to let the country go over the edge. No bailouts, never again. These Republicans are about to sacrifice Americans those earning $250,000 or $1 million or more, to try to prevent the country from thinking of Republicans as heartless.

It won’t work-Republicans are heartless, greedy, manipulative, sycophantic and yellow.

Get this goddam government off my back and out of my neighbor hood! I don’t care what color the stinking President is. Let him shut up and get back on vacation.

Let this country’s economy crash. Do not delay the crash. The sooner the weak and unskilled figure out that no one is going to get them a phone or make the phones work, the sooner they will get back in their ghettos and shut up and take the handouts they can get. All we have to do is let the scum know they will not only have to work but they will have to succeed, on their own. This system of takers will crash in 3 years.

Let the system crash! Do not tax the rich thinking that will keep the commies from your door. The commies are coming and they are driving the cars you dreamed up and you built and they are on the roads and crossing the bridges you designed and you paid for.

Let them starve under the crush of their own greed and mindlessness. Scorched earth, I say, no prisoners, no mercy! Close the factories, burn the wheat fields, let the bridges rot and fall!

Constance

I hear you. It is beyond frustrating. It’s such a helpless feeling being a citizen in this country right now. Washington is not listening to us, and they don’t care. The GOP is playing the same game again – Fiscal Cliff Crisis. It’s a game that they already know the ending to, but we are kept in the dark until the last minute, when we are sold down the river once again. Then, in three more years, we will be told to hold our noses and vote for the candidate of choice, who promises to be conservative, but never is. I’m not doing it again. I’m not. I will not hold my nose and vote ever again in my life. And, I NEVER thought I would say this and mean it. I mean it now.

gunclinger

Where is John Galt?

I feel JUST as you do.

I retired early, and I will no longer pay taxes to support the mess created by BOTH Parties!

Yes, and we need the rich to be so wealthy that they buy a lot more. Manufacture and assembly of yachts and private jets employs tens of thousands of people. We need even more rich people buying even more expensive goodies to get America working again.

Thank you, Mark Steyn, for the hard facts of the Buffecit. Everyone talks about government waste and government spending; what about government STEALING?
How much taxpayer money goes into the pockets of corrupt and criminal politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies? Examples: TARP, bailouts, Solyndra, stimulus, “foreign aid”. How much do the bureaucratic and congressional middle men rake in on all the wealth transfers? Economist Milton Friedman said that if the poor actually received all the money that is supposedly given to them they would be rich. The communist/socialist systems are set up for one purpose and that is to increase the wealth and power of the politicians and the bureaucrats who set them up and stuff their own pockets with the money.

Can American citizens cut off the funding for UNconstitutional laws since congress isn’t interested in defunding UNconstitutional bureaucracies, agencies and programs?
Here are two of the ways that two Citizens kept the Satanic government crooks from robbing them.

Fake OMB numbers on IRS forms could be why Robert Lawrence won case over IRS.

Article from the Welcome.FreeEnterpriseSociety.com, free catalogue: All Charges Dismissed! On May 12, 2006 in Peoria, Illinois, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice motioned the court to dismiss all charges against IRS victim Robert Lawrence in Federal District Court. The motion for dismissal came on the heals of a surprise tactic by Lawrence’s defense attorney Oscar Stilley. The tactic threatened exposure of IRS’s on-going efforts to defraud the public. The move put DOJ attorney’s in an apparent predicament and with just days before trial filed a motion for dismissal, with prejudice.
Sixty days earlier, the DOJ had indicted Lawrence on three counts of willful failure to file a 1040 form, and three felony counts of income tax evasion. The federal Judge dismissed all charges with prejudice, meaning the DOJ cannot charge Lawrence with those same crimes again for the same years.
The trial was to have started on Monday morning, May 15.
On Wednesday, May 10, Stilley mailed a set of documents to the DOJ in response to DOJ’s discovery demands. The documents revealed to DOJ that Lawrence was basing his entire defense on an act of Congress, 44 U.S.C. 3500-3520, also known as the “Paperwork Reduction Act” (PRA).
In Section 3512 of the Act, titled “Public Protection”, it says that no person shall be subject to any penalty for failing to comply with an agency’s collection of information request (such as a 1040 form), if the request does not display a valid control number assigned by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in accordance with the requirements of the Act, or if the agency fails to inform the person who is to respond to the collection of information that he is not required to respond to the collection of information request unless it displays a valid control number.
In Section 3512 Congress went on to authorize that the protection provided by Section 3512 may be raised in the form of a complete defense at any time during an agency’s administrative process (such as an IRS Tax Court or Collection Due Process Hearing) or during a judicial proceeding (such as Lawrence’s criminal trial).
In sum, the PRA requires that all government agencies display valid OMB control numbers and certain disclosures directly on all information collection forms that the public is requested to file. Lawrence’s sole defense was that he was not required to file an IRS Form 1040 because it displays an invalid OMB control number.
Government officials may have been concerned that if the case went to trial, it would expose the fraudulent, counterfeit 1040. They may also have been concerned that a trial would expose the ongoing conspiracy between OMB and IRS to publish 1040 forms each year that those agencies knew were in violation of the PRA.
Any information collection form, such as IRS Form 1040, which lacks bona fide statutory authority or which conflicts with the Constitution, CANNOT BE ISSUED AN OMB NUMBER. If a control number were issued for such a form, the form would be invalid and of no force and effect.
Under the facts and circumstances of the last 24 years, it is safe to say that IRS Form 1040 is a fraudulent, counterfeit, bootleg form. Government officials responsible for this fraud should be investigated and face indictment for willfully making and sponsoring false documents.
Robert Lawrence’s documents made these points quite clear:
A) IRS Form 1040 violates the federal Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) and is therefore a legally
invalid form.
B) Under the Public Protection clause of the PRA, no person can be penalized for failing to file a 1040 if the IRS fails to fully comply with the PRA.
C) The PRS statutes explicitly provide that a PRA challenge is a complete defense and can be raised in any administrative or judicial proceeding.
D) The IRS Individual Form 1040 has not and cannot comply with the requirements of the PRA because no existing statute authorizes the IRS to impose or collect the federal income tax from individuals. That lack of bona fide authority makes it impossible for IRS to avoid violating the PRA.
Since the case did not go forward to trial and since the DOJ is not and will not tell the reason for asking for a dismissal, it is impossible to determine, with any certainty, the actual reason for the motion to dismiss.
The DOJ must have felt that going forward would result in a probable loss for the government. If that happened, the press and others would quickly spread the word. The DOJ is exercising more caution probably due to the devastating loss against former IRS special agent Joe Bannister in 2005. That case has received a massive amount of national attention. The PRA is a powerful tool, and one the freedom fighters have used for some time. In fact Free Enterprise Society was instrumental in developing this issue in years past.
Was the PRS the sole reason for the dismissal? I hope it was a main reason but we will never know. Still, IT IS A VICTORY FOR ALL AMERICANS LOOKING FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY.
Congratulations to Robert Lawrence and all involved! Order his DVD #06DRL for $11.00 plus $5.00 shipping:
Free Enterprise Society, 6083 N. Figarden Drive, PMB 208, Fresno, California 93722

Substantially reprinted from the New York Times article of August 12, 2003.

FedEx pilot, Vernice Kuglin, 58, legally has NO taxes withheld from her paycheck, and the IRS, like a child denied his fifth helping of ice cream, is throwing a temper tantrum.

After being charged with six counts of “tax evasion” and having her passport stolent by the IRS, Vernice was acquited by a federal jury in Memphis, TN. Like many other income tax cases in which the victim has won, Kuglin’s testimony was bolstered by a stack of letters she had written to the IRS asking the Internal Revenue Service to tell her the law that requires her to pay taxes. True to its track record, the IRS refused to respond to her repeated inquiries. Instead, the agency used its standard “bluff and bully” strategy to try and force Kuglin to pay. though many women, or men, for that matter, would have buckled, Vernice stood firm.

As court documents show, the experienced pilot filed a withholding statement on Dec. 30, 1995, directing that no taxes be withheld from her pay. From 1996 through 2001 she earned $920,000 as a pilot for FedEx, but no taxes were withheld, she said yesterday. Had she ignorantly allowed withholding for the period, a total of about $250,000 would have been stripped from her pay and given to the IRS. Sandra Munoz, a company spikeswoman for FedEx, said that the shipper was complying with all IRS regulations on withholding and did not say that Kuglin had done anything wrong. Minoz also did not say how many employees had submitted similar requests via W-4 forms or otherwise, and were having no taxes withheld. Joe Murphy, the federal prosecutor in the case, indicated in court that the agency intended to find a way to take all that it can by way of a civil action. Mr. Murphy did not say if the actions of the IRS were lawful, choosing to dismiss the issue yesterday by saying that he was not allowed to comment on the case outside of court.

The lead defense lawyer, Lowell H. Becraft Jr. of Huntsville Alabama, said he built the defense around the absence of response by the IRS to Ms. Kuglin’s letters. He said the letter showed that his client lacked a criminal intent to evade the tax laws and was instead operating from a sincere belief that her conduct was proper. Mr. Becraft, who 12 years ago was part of a team that won acquittals for 17 defendants in another Memphis tax trial, said that jurors told him they had voted 7 to 5 for conviction on Thursday. They then told Judge Jon P. McCalla of Federal District Court that they were deadlocked. He ordered further deliberations, and the jury voted to acquit on Friday. “The whole thing could have been resolved if the government had simply answered her questions,” Mr. Becraft said. “It didn’t happen. I made an argument to the jury that an American has a right to ask the government for answers. A lot of people in the tax movement do not hide, they are in the face of the IRS and they write letters that set forth their position. And while a lot of them are not articulate or well grounded in legal positions, they have some things they want answered about their tax liability. But their questions are usually ignored.” Mr. Becraft also said, during an hour he spent with jurors after the verdict, their most focused comments were about the absence of a response from the IRS to Ms. Kuglin’s letters. The IRS was unable to state yesterday what policy it has on responding to letters asking it to specify the law that makes people liable for income taxes. Nancy Mathis, an IRS spokeswoman, quipped that the IRS had posted various items on its Web site and that it had issued press releases stating that taxes are mandatory, yet she did not cite any sections from the Internal Revenue Code.

In interviews over the last nine years, scores of people who affirm that they are not required to pay the income tax have said that they had sent letters to the IRS asking what law makes them liable for the taxes, yet they had received no response. Ms. Kuglin said yesterday, “I believe the 16th Amendment is constitutional and the Internal Revenue Code is constitutional, but I also feel there is a gross misapplication of the individual income tax laws by the IRS. The questions I have asked are what section of the Internal Revenue code makes me liable for the individual income tax and what law requires me to fill out the Form 1040 tax return,” she said. Ms. Kuglin said she hoped to resume flying as soon as the government returns her passport, which was seized after her indictment early in the case. Congratulations, Ms. Kuglin! Her DVD can be ordered for $11.00 plus $5.00 shipping. Order #04DVK

Consider the following:
1) The economy is like a runaway train: It is going to crash and nobody can or could stop it. Not even Mitt. The Leftist/Liberal/Progressives, starting with Teddy Roosevelt, have set it on this course and by all that is Holy, they should be the ones at the throttle when it hits the cliff. Who better to take the blame?
2) Margret Thatcher: “Socialism is fine until you run out of other people’s money”. Tax the rich is preposterous. They just pick up their marbles and find a more equitable game. If the top 5% of earners (who pay over 60% of taxes) decide to close up shop and live off their off shore accounts in a country that is cheaper than the US for the next four years where will the money come from to support the government give-away programs? Remember, it’s an INCOME tax. No income. No tax.
3) The top three government expenditures are social welfare programs, the military and government salaries. Cut any of these and you will be voted out of office. Also, without the government give-aways, the 47% will do what the Greeks are doing: rioting. Which means this government will be fighting in the streets against those who elected them.
By voicing a bi-partisan effort, the Republicans cannot be blamed for obstructionism by the administration (as they did for the last four years) when their Marxist/Socialist policies fail. In other words, the fault for failure will fall entirely on Obama and the Democrats (where it belongs).
As conservatives, we understand the principle of ‘building our house on the rock and not the shifting sands’. So we will hunker down in our communities and work to elect good conservatives to local offices, support our churches and educate our children. And when the storm has passed we will be there to pick up the pieces and rebuild and get the train back on the right track.

Jerseygalnny

I can listen to Mark Steyn all day! Thanks, RS, for posting this!

GiantM

Sorry Jennie, I’m sure what you said was good, but it’s posts like this in the forum that end up on my scroll button. Google: A.D.D. 🙂

MLCBLOG

Buffett is a buffoon, or worse. I think he is not only positing unrealistic and foolish ideas, hoping to gather some people, for what reason I do not know, but even more I have heard about his very ruthless play of the market while he fronts off these foolish idea. He would like us to think he is just a buffoon. I think he is a shady character. My first tip was a solid businessman being a liberal. I don’t buy that, either. I think it’s a ruse.

Suzyqpie

“How does allowing politicians to take more money from Americas most successful in taxes to squander in ways that enhance their reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for anyone,” quote Dr T Sowell. The folly can not be summarized more succinctly.

iHeartLife

More proof that maths is hard for a particular group of people. Who’da thought that being rich would one day become a near stigma? *shrugg…

BS61

I love him!

pdxlady

The “Federal Bufficit,” I love Mark Steyn. He always cracks himself up and that cracks me up. He always serves up brilliance with humor.

12grace

Excellent!

yhxqqsn

The Demofreaks want to tax everyone because even they aren’t stupid enough to believe that taxing just one small group of citizens is going to pay for all their “help” they given to the country. But they are afraid to admit that at this time because of course no one wants to hear that. So using their usual MO they are first sticking the camel’s nose(“JUST tax the EVIL RICH”) in the tent and will slowly get the whole thing in there eventually.